30 VII 07
today was National Eel Day. swear to god. i am ad-libbing the name, but it is succinct. i officially christen today the second greatest holiday of all time, after only All Hallows Eve. if you have never succumbed to the peerless dish called unagi, please sate your unknown hunger with alacrity. fervor!
dinner tonight at the abode of Miya-sensei, one of our collaborators sage in the ways of fishes. a sushi dinner (very appropriate and well-crafted) with his charming family and little dog Lulu. superb all 'round. i would comment more, but... it's time for the birthday tale. let me try Japanese here - otanjoubi-monogatari! yes!
the festivities kicked off, of course, with Tuesday night's birthday-anticipatory baseball game. Wednesday heralded the great day, and i kicked off work to go to a lavish lunch at the New York Grill, Park Hyatt Tokyo. it's the famous bar/grill from the Lost in Translation hotel, where Bill Murray caroused and Scarlett smoldered. you can imagine my delight; me, the guy who toured Ghostbusters (also Murray, of course) film locations in NYC last March. i dressed "right nice", donned sweet shades and rolled up, grinning at film-familiar locales and pretending to be important. hahaha.
the restaurant was incredible - on the 52nd floor of the hotel, with 30+ foot windows offering a god's-eye-view of the teeming megalopolis on a rare, sunny day. truly world-class meals are not commonplace in the life of a humble biologist, but i was treated to one that day. the dining proper comprised three "courses", beginning with a preposterous appetizer buffet that would be a full meal for any sane mortal. not for me. i loaded that mug up like a culinary Noah's Ark before retreating to my elegant seat - tablecloth held back by the courteous waitstaff! - and a fine glass of wine. the main course was a yellowtail fillet in some incredible manner of walnut glaze... probably the most delectable fish ever to grace the palate. the apocalypse was revealed in a full-on dessert buffet. i will leave that one to the imagination, but - no offense - you will probably not do it justice!
went back to work for a few more relatively unproductive hours (being glutted, wined and all) before heading out to Shinjuku with the crew. our object? AYCD karaoke. i expected between six and sixteen to appear, with many noncommittals (being a Wednesday), and so on. after all catastrophes and the such were accounted for, we were an international bunch of eight with beer and street sho-chu in hand (thanks, Jeff). four from the States, Canadian Jeff, Celine and Mikha from France, and for the first time my dear and hilarious friend Yaguchi-san from the lab. we're like Rainbow Six for drinking and singing instead of counterterrorism.
anyway, a few new pictures of the Event are up in the album. we got silly and sang for three hours, well past train-closing-hour for many of us. ofttimes i end up the MC (when Sisi isn't rocking the controller), and felt that the only way to get this party started right was with "Thriller."
and so it began.
Yaguchi-san and i seem to have identical tastes in music, a trans-Pacific likemindedness born of depravity. i rocked the mike hard, earning a standing ovation (haha) for PJ's "Better Man", among others. Jeff joined me for our ritual Johnny Cash. and life was so very good.
rainy season is almost over (one more week), but we've been buffeted by hardcore thunderstorms as a climax to this dreary season. i skipped under lightning and took a train cross-town to the Tokyo Nat'l Museum on Sunday to check out the art. saw some crazy katanas, including a Masamune (seen in half the Japanese RPGs ever released), some of which were probably cursed if the legends are true.
another thunderstorm, so i'll truncate it here. check for new stuff in the album!
7.31.2007
7.24.2007
On Weird Science and Extravagant Birthdays (Preface)
24 VII 07
tonight's tales: a quick note on an unusual bar, madness at the Natural History Museum, and baseballllll! skip and choose as you please.
met up with the crew, including far-flung fiends working in Tsukuba (say 'SCUBA') on Friday night and proceeded to Golden Gai. no, it's not the gay district - it's a labyrinth of tiny bars the size of pantries, most of which are openly hostile to foreigners. we ended up at a "safe" one called The Coin Bar, operated by an amusing Filipino-looking woman. Brendan and i befriended the locals and a crazy middle aged American expat, the Hawaiian-shirted kind you'd expect to find at any airport bar in the country. karaoke was done right in front of the bar for 100Y a pop, which was my first time before a public audience. started things off with a sing-along, "Bohemian Rhapsody," and got everyone in the bar in on it. drunken businessmen at their drinks, the barmaid, every beating heart. so epic.
hit the Natural Science Museum in Ueno on Saturday. i assure you, the flavor there, in a country with no hangups whatsoever about evolution, "The E Word," was a far cry from our censored endeavors in the States. the Global Hall was particularly superbly well done, with seven or so floors (many subterranean!) of exhibits under amazingly high ceilings. i beheld a legendary pantheon of fossil taxa - as in nearly all museums, probably mostly casts - from Archelon, the largest turtle eVar and the size of a small aircraft, to the wolflike ancestors of whales such as Pakicetus.
there are cladograms with Bayesian support indices.
yes.
you can imagine that i'm a fairly jaded person. it's not often anymore that i break into a spontaneous grin, but one of the two moments lately was upon entering the Biodiversity Hall at the museum. it is a temple to the diversity of life on earth, a veritable underground necropolis of kingdoms and classes. tremendous sharks and rays loom from the warehouse ceiling over mock kelp beds. the path winds through an assemblage of odd vertebrate skeletons great (sperm whale) and small (tiny fish). one hundred and fifty some-odd feet of preserved minke whale intestines are displayed in tight undulations on the wall... absolutely writhing with nematode parasites. that's half a football field of bloodsucking, roving white worms. it is astonishing and revolting.
i'll cut it off there, as the rest is really geeky and not all my dear readers are science fiends. :)
Wednesday, tomorrow, is my birthday! i will officially be Methuselean. but the celebrations began today, as has transpired the last three of four years. 2004 - big party at our DC apartments on the 24th with crescendo at midnight. 2006 - my birthday proper was spent in its entirety, until 1159pm, at LAX, so we partied early. and now, 2007 - kicked it off early with a great seat at the Yomiuri (Tokyo) Giants baseball game as they hosted the Yokohama Baystars.
entering the Tokyo Dome was the second "oh man, i'm friggin' smiling" moments of late. after weeks and weeks of perpetually ferrous, overcast weather and drizzle - Tokyo's godforsaken rainy season and consequent winter depression - i stumbled outside this morning to discover a perfectly cloudless, warm day. a superb day for a ballgame, even if under a dome. i rolled up a few minutes before the first pitch and was overwhelmed by two waves of emotion. nostalgia, as the last proper domed game i'd attended was at the Astrodome. second, an electric thrill as i heard thousands of baseball fans going berserk in unison and chanting Baseball War Hymns.
i sprang for a great seat, down low on the first baseline. the outfield sections were reserved for rabid fans, 3/4 for the Giants and the rest along left field for the visiting team. the atmosphere was like that at a college football game and then some. a palimpsest from cribbed Darwin:
"I do not believe that any one could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than [these fans] did for [their team]."
the weird part was that they only cheered and chanted, waving immense team flags and trembling colors, when their own team was at bat. during the defensive half of each inning, they were stone silent save big plays.
the Tokyo Dome knows no fat peanut dudes. the aisles were patrolled by a mercenary army of cute girls in brewery baseball jerseys, lugging around insulated minikegs on their backs. they were sexy dromedaries. others in surreal neon garb stolen from 1991 sold whiskey and tasty sundries. i ate soba noodles and killed beers. life is good.
the Giants got owned. the outfield is a rather diminutive thing... i don't suspect that any of the fences were much farther out than the left field Crawford boxes at Minute Maid Park (i.e., shallow!). while the general level of play wasn't quite up to MLB standards... even with my Astros playing as miserably as they are... there were still four or five put over the fence tonight.
the game was close from the fifth through eighth innings, and i stuck around with the diehard fans to the bitter end. i have no idea why many waved inflatable dolphins in the air. the Giants mascot... the "Giabbit", is some deformed, chibi, orange hare with a mangled left eye.
it is an inscrutable culture.
tomorrow!- (or 13 minutes from now, as i type) birthday continues with a fabulously luxurious lunch at the hotel bar/restaurant from Lost in Translation (Park Hyatt). and in the evening, a colossal crew will assemble in Shinjuku to crush the owners of karaoke parlors with such poor business acumen as to offer nomihodai karaoke to hollow-legged Americans.
feast, drink and be merry. salud.
tonight's tales: a quick note on an unusual bar, madness at the Natural History Museum, and baseballllll! skip and choose as you please.
met up with the crew, including far-flung fiends working in Tsukuba (say 'SCUBA') on Friday night and proceeded to Golden Gai. no, it's not the gay district - it's a labyrinth of tiny bars the size of pantries, most of which are openly hostile to foreigners. we ended up at a "safe" one called The Coin Bar, operated by an amusing Filipino-looking woman. Brendan and i befriended the locals and a crazy middle aged American expat, the Hawaiian-shirted kind you'd expect to find at any airport bar in the country. karaoke was done right in front of the bar for 100Y a pop, which was my first time before a public audience. started things off with a sing-along, "Bohemian Rhapsody," and got everyone in the bar in on it. drunken businessmen at their drinks, the barmaid, every beating heart. so epic.
hit the Natural Science Museum in Ueno on Saturday. i assure you, the flavor there, in a country with no hangups whatsoever about evolution, "The E Word," was a far cry from our censored endeavors in the States. the Global Hall was particularly superbly well done, with seven or so floors (many subterranean!) of exhibits under amazingly high ceilings. i beheld a legendary pantheon of fossil taxa - as in nearly all museums, probably mostly casts - from Archelon, the largest turtle eVar and the size of a small aircraft, to the wolflike ancestors of whales such as Pakicetus.
there are cladograms with Bayesian support indices.
yes.
you can imagine that i'm a fairly jaded person. it's not often anymore that i break into a spontaneous grin, but one of the two moments lately was upon entering the Biodiversity Hall at the museum. it is a temple to the diversity of life on earth, a veritable underground necropolis of kingdoms and classes. tremendous sharks and rays loom from the warehouse ceiling over mock kelp beds. the path winds through an assemblage of odd vertebrate skeletons great (sperm whale) and small (tiny fish). one hundred and fifty some-odd feet of preserved minke whale intestines are displayed in tight undulations on the wall... absolutely writhing with nematode parasites. that's half a football field of bloodsucking, roving white worms. it is astonishing and revolting.
i'll cut it off there, as the rest is really geeky and not all my dear readers are science fiends. :)
Wednesday, tomorrow, is my birthday! i will officially be Methuselean. but the celebrations began today, as has transpired the last three of four years. 2004 - big party at our DC apartments on the 24th with crescendo at midnight. 2006 - my birthday proper was spent in its entirety, until 1159pm, at LAX, so we partied early. and now, 2007 - kicked it off early with a great seat at the Yomiuri (Tokyo) Giants baseball game as they hosted the Yokohama Baystars.
entering the Tokyo Dome was the second "oh man, i'm friggin' smiling" moments of late. after weeks and weeks of perpetually ferrous, overcast weather and drizzle - Tokyo's godforsaken rainy season and consequent winter depression - i stumbled outside this morning to discover a perfectly cloudless, warm day. a superb day for a ballgame, even if under a dome. i rolled up a few minutes before the first pitch and was overwhelmed by two waves of emotion. nostalgia, as the last proper domed game i'd attended was at the Astrodome. second, an electric thrill as i heard thousands of baseball fans going berserk in unison and chanting Baseball War Hymns.
i sprang for a great seat, down low on the first baseline. the outfield sections were reserved for rabid fans, 3/4 for the Giants and the rest along left field for the visiting team. the atmosphere was like that at a college football game and then some. a palimpsest from cribbed Darwin:
"I do not believe that any one could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than [these fans] did for [their team]."
the weird part was that they only cheered and chanted, waving immense team flags and trembling colors, when their own team was at bat. during the defensive half of each inning, they were stone silent save big plays.
the Tokyo Dome knows no fat peanut dudes. the aisles were patrolled by a mercenary army of cute girls in brewery baseball jerseys, lugging around insulated minikegs on their backs. they were sexy dromedaries. others in surreal neon garb stolen from 1991 sold whiskey and tasty sundries. i ate soba noodles and killed beers. life is good.
the Giants got owned. the outfield is a rather diminutive thing... i don't suspect that any of the fences were much farther out than the left field Crawford boxes at Minute Maid Park (i.e., shallow!). while the general level of play wasn't quite up to MLB standards... even with my Astros playing as miserably as they are... there were still four or five put over the fence tonight.
the game was close from the fifth through eighth innings, and i stuck around with the diehard fans to the bitter end. i have no idea why many waved inflatable dolphins in the air. the Giants mascot... the "Giabbit", is some deformed, chibi, orange hare with a mangled left eye.
it is an inscrutable culture.
tomorrow!- (or 13 minutes from now, as i type) birthday continues with a fabulously luxurious lunch at the hotel bar/restaurant from Lost in Translation (Park Hyatt). and in the evening, a colossal crew will assemble in Shinjuku to crush the owners of karaoke parlors with such poor business acumen as to offer nomihodai karaoke to hollow-legged Americans.
feast, drink and be merry. salud.
7.19.2007
As Promised
a handful of new images are up in the Japan Photos section. behold!- geekdom. drunken karaoke. joyless fragments of fish and higher vertebrates!
On Natural Disaster and Neptune's Grim Harvest
19 VII 07
for a while not much happened. then i learned that -imminently- a typhoon (hurricane) was about to strafe the islands and my weekend was doomed. so i stayed inside while the weakened storm howled in wild disproportion to the rather slow rain that fell for three days. i drank bourbon and played Super Nintendo. and life was good.
Monday morning was beautiful and clear. the sun revealed his wizened and fire-mustachioed face unto a stark world. the looming towers of Shinjuku were, for once, in fine relief and unshrouded by haze.
and then there was an earthquake.
i honestly didn't even notice the damned thing. i was loading a gel at the time, a ritual requiring a level of focus and dexterity just this side of cha-no-yu. our French postdoc Sebastien ran in ten or so minutes later, excited and a little freaked out, and asked if i'd felt it. apparently it was a slow-wave (but substantial!) lateral movement. hey, i was off in my own little world of constant podcast bombardment and molecular biology. bleh.
apparently, and the situation is revealed to be orders of magnitude more grim by the day, a nuclear plant near the (distant from Tokyo) epicenter suffered damage and a couple/several hundred barrels of nuclear waste tipped over and much spilled into the sea. um. oops. Homer Simpson at the helm once again.
we had a BBQ party on the roof last night, a delicious affair of vegetables, fish and beef on a MacGuyvered assemblage of cooking apparatus. we drank beer, talked about Jun (old Inoue-sama), and the relative merits of blonde and dark-haired American actresses. also, we agree that Bill Murray is pretty much king of kings.
this morning, i met up with Sato-sensei and my best friend at the lab, the hilarious Yaguchi-san, and we finally made the long-promised and even more delayed trip to the world famous Tsukiji fish market. now, everyone and their uninteresting grandmother uses the phrase "world famous" to describe their bathtub gin, or pralines they sell out of wheelbarrows, or their particular flavor of erotic massage. but this is the real deal - probably the most renowned fish market in the world. certainly in all of Asia.
after a cross-city subway ride, we alighted on (to steal the London tube phrase) the Tsukiji station. there was the faintest aroma - i hesitate to say odor - of seafood in the air. i'd been told by John back home that there was no smell at all, and after five minutes that was true. Tsukiji is an immense complex of sundry markets, the largest of which is the fish... emporium. gotta mix it up here, folks, bear with me. i'm working on uploading photos this evening, but will describe the scene.
Tsukiji is a colossal, rather low-ceilinged warehouse covering endless cramped lanes of The Sea's Bounty. it is a psychotic cornucopia of colors and classes (the taxonomic variety). fully 1/3 of everything there, an inverted Noah's Ark, is alive, making Tsukiji a de facto really, really depressing aquarium. fish opercula pulse gently in the air, timidly waving goodbye to life. cheeky mussels, huge mollusks probably rendered thusly by the agency of spilled radioactive waste squirted jets of water six feet across the aisle. madmen on mechanized kart-platform hybrids called tare scream by on the major avenues, heedless of humans ground beneath their wheels.
you wouldn't believe the things we saw. severed and discarded tuna heads as large as those of lions - their baseball-sized eyes sold separately as a superior source of collagen to keep an oneichan's skin supple. wild and tangled phalanxes of technicolor octopuses (correctly "octopodes", never "octopi" - The More You Know ~*) bearing beaks and suckers in frozen dissent. bizarre tunicate colonies i can imagine no one eating, fishes of all sizes, stripes and colors, Giant Enemy Crabs, living prawns the size of lobsters, you name it.
watching men process immense bluefin tuna is a spectacle. they literally go to work with power tools and katana-like implements to render the fish, which can be worth over $10,000 each. the alleys run with blood and water.
i anticipated this and still wore sandals. not a great move.
the tuna meat was deep, deep crimson, almost purple in parts. however.... now and then we encountered a different type of meat in similarly immense blocks, like succulent masonry. Yaguchi-san turned back with a grin and i knew what was coming. "ah, whale meat!" yes, those scientifically harvested minkes were represented in force throughout the market in various forms - thin packaged slices, bricks, and grisly charnel houses. i'll post a photo of the latter for your enjoyment.
we searched and searched but came up empty on sharks and rays. they only had dried, skinned and packaged ray fins (i think they were skate). a disappointment considering how many i'd seen in Barcelona off La Rambla.
ate a very, very early lunch nearby - a meal that i think was called kaisedon. many different types of thin sushi and other weird animals and eggs over a bowl of rice. good stuff.
finished the trip at a Shinto shrine honoring... i swear to god (any god), the fish we just ate. i have a photo of a massive stone inscribed with "sushi [some kanji]". there was a separate shrine for shrimp, for anglerfish, and others. so friggin' intense.
and then i went back to work and life was boring again. i've plotted out the rest of the trip though, and it's almost nonstop action from here on out. birthday is next Wednesday - i'm assembling a massive international crew to go out for AYCD karaoke.
i'm taking requests.
for a while not much happened. then i learned that -imminently- a typhoon (hurricane) was about to strafe the islands and my weekend was doomed. so i stayed inside while the weakened storm howled in wild disproportion to the rather slow rain that fell for three days. i drank bourbon and played Super Nintendo. and life was good.
Monday morning was beautiful and clear. the sun revealed his wizened and fire-mustachioed face unto a stark world. the looming towers of Shinjuku were, for once, in fine relief and unshrouded by haze.
and then there was an earthquake.
i honestly didn't even notice the damned thing. i was loading a gel at the time, a ritual requiring a level of focus and dexterity just this side of cha-no-yu. our French postdoc Sebastien ran in ten or so minutes later, excited and a little freaked out, and asked if i'd felt it. apparently it was a slow-wave (but substantial!) lateral movement. hey, i was off in my own little world of constant podcast bombardment and molecular biology. bleh.
apparently, and the situation is revealed to be orders of magnitude more grim by the day, a nuclear plant near the (distant from Tokyo) epicenter suffered damage and a couple/several hundred barrels of nuclear waste tipped over and much spilled into the sea. um. oops. Homer Simpson at the helm once again.
we had a BBQ party on the roof last night, a delicious affair of vegetables, fish and beef on a MacGuyvered assemblage of cooking apparatus. we drank beer, talked about Jun (old Inoue-sama), and the relative merits of blonde and dark-haired American actresses. also, we agree that Bill Murray is pretty much king of kings.
this morning, i met up with Sato-sensei and my best friend at the lab, the hilarious Yaguchi-san, and we finally made the long-promised and even more delayed trip to the world famous Tsukiji fish market. now, everyone and their uninteresting grandmother uses the phrase "world famous" to describe their bathtub gin, or pralines they sell out of wheelbarrows, or their particular flavor of erotic massage. but this is the real deal - probably the most renowned fish market in the world. certainly in all of Asia.
after a cross-city subway ride, we alighted on (to steal the London tube phrase) the Tsukiji station. there was the faintest aroma - i hesitate to say odor - of seafood in the air. i'd been told by John back home that there was no smell at all, and after five minutes that was true. Tsukiji is an immense complex of sundry markets, the largest of which is the fish... emporium. gotta mix it up here, folks, bear with me. i'm working on uploading photos this evening, but will describe the scene.
Tsukiji is a colossal, rather low-ceilinged warehouse covering endless cramped lanes of The Sea's Bounty. it is a psychotic cornucopia of colors and classes (the taxonomic variety). fully 1/3 of everything there, an inverted Noah's Ark, is alive, making Tsukiji a de facto really, really depressing aquarium. fish opercula pulse gently in the air, timidly waving goodbye to life. cheeky mussels, huge mollusks probably rendered thusly by the agency of spilled radioactive waste squirted jets of water six feet across the aisle. madmen on mechanized kart-platform hybrids called tare scream by on the major avenues, heedless of humans ground beneath their wheels.
you wouldn't believe the things we saw. severed and discarded tuna heads as large as those of lions - their baseball-sized eyes sold separately as a superior source of collagen to keep an oneichan's skin supple. wild and tangled phalanxes of technicolor octopuses (correctly "octopodes", never "octopi" - The More You Know ~*) bearing beaks and suckers in frozen dissent. bizarre tunicate colonies i can imagine no one eating, fishes of all sizes, stripes and colors, Giant Enemy Crabs, living prawns the size of lobsters, you name it.
watching men process immense bluefin tuna is a spectacle. they literally go to work with power tools and katana-like implements to render the fish, which can be worth over $10,000 each. the alleys run with blood and water.
i anticipated this and still wore sandals. not a great move.
the tuna meat was deep, deep crimson, almost purple in parts. however.... now and then we encountered a different type of meat in similarly immense blocks, like succulent masonry. Yaguchi-san turned back with a grin and i knew what was coming. "ah, whale meat!" yes, those scientifically harvested minkes were represented in force throughout the market in various forms - thin packaged slices, bricks, and grisly charnel houses. i'll post a photo of the latter for your enjoyment.
we searched and searched but came up empty on sharks and rays. they only had dried, skinned and packaged ray fins (i think they were skate). a disappointment considering how many i'd seen in Barcelona off La Rambla.
ate a very, very early lunch nearby - a meal that i think was called kaisedon. many different types of thin sushi and other weird animals and eggs over a bowl of rice. good stuff.
finished the trip at a Shinto shrine honoring... i swear to god (any god), the fish we just ate. i have a photo of a massive stone inscribed with "sushi [some kanji]". there was a separate shrine for shrimp, for anglerfish, and others. so friggin' intense.
and then i went back to work and life was boring again. i've plotted out the rest of the trip though, and it's almost nonstop action from here on out. birthday is next Wednesday - i'm assembling a massive international crew to go out for AYCD karaoke.
i'm taking requests.
7.10.2007
A Word
two new posts, as promised. i suspect that i am fighting a cold, and my faculties are presently foggy and recalcitrant. all the same, have at them!
On Doing The Town Up Right -and- Great Personal Victory
10 VII 07, Being the Latter of Two Parts
Saturday night brought more communal joy on the town, starting with a concert at a subterranean venue called Yoyogi Zoo. the bands: Vasallo Crab 75 and Vish. you have to respect their way with words. VC75 was a catchy and invigorating exercise in rock and punk. the lead man was a bean pole in a scarlet sweater, shaved head under a black fedora that he manipulated in comical displays of showmanship. Vish was a really mellow (but enjoyable) act... talented and fun, but much farther down the pop end of the spectrum than i'd normally enjoy. Other Neil, Lane and i had no complaints - the two girls in the band were cute and charismatic. haha.
and then, well, you know the rest. nomihodai karaoke.
Sunday was a precision engineered, as though by lab coat-wearing madmen at Intel, ridiculous Day of Entertainment across Tokyo. this was a solo exercise, and every friggin' moment rocked.
started the day (in the early afternoon) at the Sunshine International Aquarium, which has my vote for the most smile-inducing name in history. it was on the 10th floor and roof of an immense building, with covered but open air zoo enclosures ringed by the aquarium proper. there was a splash tank and rocky outcrop with about thirty little penguins being cleaned and fed. i didn't recognize the species until a worker picked one up by the scruff and it immediately identified itself as a jackass penguin. common names have never been more accurate.
there was also a display with huge white pelicans (engaged in terrifying acts of snatching and fighting over fish), other birds, and a proudly displayed outdoor exhibit of small (1m) ocean sunfish. the Japanese love those fish, which they call mambou.
a walk-in vivarium had all manners of strange mammals: tamandua, lemurs, armadillos, and a mouse (i suspect an inadvertent display), among others. one lemur was in a tiny cage. i was upset until i saw another one running around with the 'dillos, and realized that it was probably just in time-out. the armadillos rooted about, but one pig-faced and plucky fellow kept grunting and trying to scramble up the log partition. it was greedily engaged in lapping up a dollop of lemur poop on the fence.
the aquarium itself was extremely impressive given its relatively small size. there were some preposterous invertebrates there that i could not identify except in the broadest possible guesses. literally alien.
dashed across town to the Sony building, where there are five or six (narrow) floors of product showrooms. the first staircase is touch sensitive and follows your path with whimsical LED lights and a tonal scale that rises or falls depending on your path. there was some great stuff on display, like HD video cameras and immense Bravia sets. the PS3, their current standard bearer of underperformance, was notably underrepresented, the only console streaming a dvd for a laptop or some such.
sun was going down behind Tokyo's omnipresent and emotionally oppressive, gray stratus roof, so i finally got on to the very serious business at hand. took a sweet elevated train to the island of Odaiba, which was recently reclaimed from Tokyo Bay. the entire bloody thing is huge entertainment complexes and hotels. first stop: Toyota Megaweb.
Megaweb is odd - a thinly veiled Toyota/Lexus showroom with free games and interactive displays on B1. the whole cavernous expanse was redolent with New Car Smell and citrus. i spent a while gawking at and sitting in a 7.3 million yen ($61K) Lexus rocketship and got on with the games. this was a good one.
downstairs, two racing simulation pods - complete with tilting hydraulics and 120+ degree display - running Gran Turismo 4. there were a fair number of people in line: a couple older guys, a teenager and his girlfriend, and a gaggle of middle school-age boys. i watched one after the other embarrass themselves. the poor girl was the worst offender - she was like a ping pong ball, ricocheting from the steel barrier at one end of the track to the next, going nowhere. i honestly have no idea how she did it. her boyfriend, who was no great shakes himself, looked like he was about to piss himself laughing.
finally, finally it was my turn. the crazy gaijin loped up, nodded to the girl running his pod, theatrically turned around his Astros cap and strapped in. 3..2..1 - i opened that mother up. there was a looong straightaway after a couple psychotic hairpins toward the end, and i got my machine to scream across the line so fast that the sim shuddered, modeling my car preparing to break up on the track. the kids were seriously cheering. not only was i the sole person to complete the course in the half hour i watched, but i set a new record (i assume for the day, and this was 930pm). hahaha. i gave the kids the V sign and strutted off, heart pounding.
connected to Megaweb was an immense warehouse of an arcade called Tokyo Leisure Center. any game you can imagine - besides the video variety, i hit a small batting cage - and haunted houses.
now, visitors here unfamiliar with my blogs of old may not appreciate the tremendous degree to which i, if you will excuse the term, am retarded for Halloween. as of June 22 (i sent Clay an email at the time), the annual bug bit me fiercely and irrevocably. it is too early... i needed an outlet. arcades with features like "Hell House" are an appropriate vent. it wasn't bad, considering it was entirely automated save the girl in a witch costume selling tickets. it made me dream of October.
finished the night at the famous Sega Joypolis. you have to stand before a futuristic hatch that dramatically hisses open before letting you enter a dim, electric blue-lit three story wonderland. there were honestly far fewer traditional games than i expected. rather, the bulk of the complex is occupied by rides of different flavors. physical thrills are on the first floor... spinning, sliding things to induce nausea and reunions with one's lunch. the top two floors have either elaborate booths for playing light gun games, movie rides, or "4-D movies". the latter are fun 3-D (with glasses) movies with lots of clever Vincent Price tricks thrown in. your seat will buck back at a jolt on screen, hot air is blown in your face when there's fire, fog fills the room, and so on. i went to one called Dark Chapel, about an impossibly hot witch summoning demons beneath a church.
before leaving, i hit up an odd, submarine-shaped attraction called Aquarena. it was an interactive digital aquarium! 40" HDTVs were arrayed about the room running decent aquarium sims. the fun part was that when you touched the screen or a fish, the program would react accordingly. touch the open water and a food pellet may descend into the tank. touch a rock and a terrifying moray will leap out and snap at your finger (trust me, you'll jump the first time). if you're persistent, you'll discover quirky parts of the sim... drawing on screen, lining up fish and tapping on them to generate musical notes, distorting them into obese leviathans... it was awesome.
i made it home from clear across Tokyo with about two bucks left to my name. hallmark of a great day.
Saturday night brought more communal joy on the town, starting with a concert at a subterranean venue called Yoyogi Zoo. the bands: Vasallo Crab 75 and Vish. you have to respect their way with words. VC75 was a catchy and invigorating exercise in rock and punk. the lead man was a bean pole in a scarlet sweater, shaved head under a black fedora that he manipulated in comical displays of showmanship. Vish was a really mellow (but enjoyable) act... talented and fun, but much farther down the pop end of the spectrum than i'd normally enjoy. Other Neil, Lane and i had no complaints - the two girls in the band were cute and charismatic. haha.
and then, well, you know the rest. nomihodai karaoke.
Sunday was a precision engineered, as though by lab coat-wearing madmen at Intel, ridiculous Day of Entertainment across Tokyo. this was a solo exercise, and every friggin' moment rocked.
started the day (in the early afternoon) at the Sunshine International Aquarium, which has my vote for the most smile-inducing name in history. it was on the 10th floor and roof of an immense building, with covered but open air zoo enclosures ringed by the aquarium proper. there was a splash tank and rocky outcrop with about thirty little penguins being cleaned and fed. i didn't recognize the species until a worker picked one up by the scruff and it immediately identified itself as a jackass penguin. common names have never been more accurate.
there was also a display with huge white pelicans (engaged in terrifying acts of snatching and fighting over fish), other birds, and a proudly displayed outdoor exhibit of small (1m) ocean sunfish. the Japanese love those fish, which they call mambou.
a walk-in vivarium had all manners of strange mammals: tamandua, lemurs, armadillos, and a mouse (i suspect an inadvertent display), among others. one lemur was in a tiny cage. i was upset until i saw another one running around with the 'dillos, and realized that it was probably just in time-out. the armadillos rooted about, but one pig-faced and plucky fellow kept grunting and trying to scramble up the log partition. it was greedily engaged in lapping up a dollop of lemur poop on the fence.
the aquarium itself was extremely impressive given its relatively small size. there were some preposterous invertebrates there that i could not identify except in the broadest possible guesses. literally alien.
dashed across town to the Sony building, where there are five or six (narrow) floors of product showrooms. the first staircase is touch sensitive and follows your path with whimsical LED lights and a tonal scale that rises or falls depending on your path. there was some great stuff on display, like HD video cameras and immense Bravia sets. the PS3, their current standard bearer of underperformance, was notably underrepresented, the only console streaming a dvd for a laptop or some such.
sun was going down behind Tokyo's omnipresent and emotionally oppressive, gray stratus roof, so i finally got on to the very serious business at hand. took a sweet elevated train to the island of Odaiba, which was recently reclaimed from Tokyo Bay. the entire bloody thing is huge entertainment complexes and hotels. first stop: Toyota Megaweb.
Megaweb is odd - a thinly veiled Toyota/Lexus showroom with free games and interactive displays on B1. the whole cavernous expanse was redolent with New Car Smell and citrus. i spent a while gawking at and sitting in a 7.3 million yen ($61K) Lexus rocketship and got on with the games. this was a good one.
downstairs, two racing simulation pods - complete with tilting hydraulics and 120+ degree display - running Gran Turismo 4. there were a fair number of people in line: a couple older guys, a teenager and his girlfriend, and a gaggle of middle school-age boys. i watched one after the other embarrass themselves. the poor girl was the worst offender - she was like a ping pong ball, ricocheting from the steel barrier at one end of the track to the next, going nowhere. i honestly have no idea how she did it. her boyfriend, who was no great shakes himself, looked like he was about to piss himself laughing.
finally, finally it was my turn. the crazy gaijin loped up, nodded to the girl running his pod, theatrically turned around his Astros cap and strapped in. 3..2..1 - i opened that mother up. there was a looong straightaway after a couple psychotic hairpins toward the end, and i got my machine to scream across the line so fast that the sim shuddered, modeling my car preparing to break up on the track. the kids were seriously cheering. not only was i the sole person to complete the course in the half hour i watched, but i set a new record (i assume for the day, and this was 930pm). hahaha. i gave the kids the V sign and strutted off, heart pounding.
connected to Megaweb was an immense warehouse of an arcade called Tokyo Leisure Center. any game you can imagine - besides the video variety, i hit a small batting cage - and haunted houses.
now, visitors here unfamiliar with my blogs of old may not appreciate the tremendous degree to which i, if you will excuse the term, am retarded for Halloween. as of June 22 (i sent Clay an email at the time), the annual bug bit me fiercely and irrevocably. it is too early... i needed an outlet. arcades with features like "Hell House" are an appropriate vent. it wasn't bad, considering it was entirely automated save the girl in a witch costume selling tickets. it made me dream of October.
finished the night at the famous Sega Joypolis. you have to stand before a futuristic hatch that dramatically hisses open before letting you enter a dim, electric blue-lit three story wonderland. there were honestly far fewer traditional games than i expected. rather, the bulk of the complex is occupied by rides of different flavors. physical thrills are on the first floor... spinning, sliding things to induce nausea and reunions with one's lunch. the top two floors have either elaborate booths for playing light gun games, movie rides, or "4-D movies". the latter are fun 3-D (with glasses) movies with lots of clever Vincent Price tricks thrown in. your seat will buck back at a jolt on screen, hot air is blown in your face when there's fire, fog fills the room, and so on. i went to one called Dark Chapel, about an impossibly hot witch summoning demons beneath a church.
before leaving, i hit up an odd, submarine-shaped attraction called Aquarena. it was an interactive digital aquarium! 40" HDTVs were arrayed about the room running decent aquarium sims. the fun part was that when you touched the screen or a fish, the program would react accordingly. touch the open water and a food pellet may descend into the tank. touch a rock and a terrifying moray will leap out and snap at your finger (trust me, you'll jump the first time). if you're persistent, you'll discover quirky parts of the sim... drawing on screen, lining up fish and tapping on them to generate musical notes, distorting them into obese leviathans... it was awesome.
i made it home from clear across Tokyo with about two bucks left to my name. hallmark of a great day.
On the Fourth in Foreign Lands
10 VII 07, Being the Former of Two Parts
it has been a while.
i've settled into The Routine: drudgery at the lab (same stuff as in FL but without helpful undergrad Oompa Loompas), read myself to sleep, rinse, repeat. occasionally punctuated by raucous evenings on the town, almost always rounded out with nomihodai (AYCD) karaoke. all-you-can-drink programs here are very manifestly not engineered with your typical Western capacity in mind... let alone that of intemperate biologists. i watch the clerk's eyes as he details this program, seeing despair and confusion germinate deep in his soul.
prepare ye for a whirlwind encompassing those vital bits where i was not slaving over reaction tubes and machinery. i have two weeks to cover - you will forgive me if i abandon strict chronological succession and skip here and there between toadstool caps of memory. hey, i just finished Cryptonomicon: 1130 pages of shuttling across five decades. you can handle a couple blog posts. this one will cover events preceding this past weekend.
being a red blooded American in a strange land, i got pumped to celebrate the 4th in grand fashion. i took a cue from Miles' (Bangkok) playbook and called our embassy to see what events might be going down there or elsewhere around town. a polite Japanese woman on the phone:
"Ah... I am sorry. Our party was on June 23rd."
"... say again? June 23rd??"
"Yes sir. I am sorry."
".............that's very strange."
at which point she hung up. hmm.
my crew is dauntless, so we organized our own evening of revelry and contempt for other nations. we had pity on several affable Canucks and brought them along to celebrate a belated Canada Day. patriotic gear was donned. i sported my oversized Texas belt buckle, drawing curious glances on the subway. Lane later tied an awesome and equally garish flag bandanna across his brow. the girls wove elaborate tales explaining how a tiny speck of red on their shoe constituted A Complete Red-White-and-Blue Ensemble. i kid, i kid.
nine of us crashed an upscale chain restaurant called Gyu Kaku - Jun gave me a nice cloth banner from there once, which i have in my apartment back in Florida. it's a yakiniku joint, which means that there's a small charcoal grill recessed into every table where you cook artful trays of bizarre meats. there was a meal set that saw numerous, increasingly odd courses brought 'round. while all delicious, the standouts were some odd manner of tongue in cross section and... Japanese hot dogs. on the Fourth. immaculately fitting.
the group shed a couple members and proceeded on cue to nomihodai karaoke. when we could wrestle the mike from heedless and howling Tyler (haha), we had some large-scale singalongs - drumming with chopsticks, bringing in fresh pitchers, and just generally being a Major Patriotic Nuisance. a fine and refined evening.
the weekend immediately following the last blog post, i went on the first of many geek pilgrimages: Akihabara and outskirts. i'd been fiending to go to Akiba since i was fifteen or so... all tech-savvy young men hold it aloft in their hearts as some cyclopean temple to Nerddom. for those uninitiated in our rites, it is also called "Electric Town", and is a dense anthill of electronics shops. it was a nice diversion from what i've increasingly recognized as the fractal geometry of Tokyo - towering subunits of near-identical entertainment / "entertainment", restaurant, and retail development iterated on spiraling and ever-decreasing scales.
i bought original Famicom carts of Dragon Quest and DQ2 for less than five bucks each. yes.
as is my duty and privilege, i sought out one of the five Pokemon Centers in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. i have never, and beyond hyperbole i truly mean this, never seen such a busy store. the queue looped back on itself four or five times with at least a dozen cash registers grabbing frantically at yen notes. the place prints money. that said, this money may combust upon erupting into the retail space, as the mean temperature of the store approximates the surface of a particularly nasty star. i almost passed out twice.
okay. on to more recent developments (next post, writing now).
it has been a while.
i've settled into The Routine: drudgery at the lab (same stuff as in FL but without helpful undergrad Oompa Loompas), read myself to sleep, rinse, repeat. occasionally punctuated by raucous evenings on the town, almost always rounded out with nomihodai (AYCD) karaoke. all-you-can-drink programs here are very manifestly not engineered with your typical Western capacity in mind... let alone that of intemperate biologists. i watch the clerk's eyes as he details this program, seeing despair and confusion germinate deep in his soul.
prepare ye for a whirlwind encompassing those vital bits where i was not slaving over reaction tubes and machinery. i have two weeks to cover - you will forgive me if i abandon strict chronological succession and skip here and there between toadstool caps of memory. hey, i just finished Cryptonomicon: 1130 pages of shuttling across five decades. you can handle a couple blog posts. this one will cover events preceding this past weekend.
being a red blooded American in a strange land, i got pumped to celebrate the 4th in grand fashion. i took a cue from Miles' (Bangkok) playbook and called our embassy to see what events might be going down there or elsewhere around town. a polite Japanese woman on the phone:
"Ah... I am sorry. Our party was on June 23rd."
"... say again? June 23rd??"
"Yes sir. I am sorry."
".............that's very strange."
at which point she hung up. hmm.
my crew is dauntless, so we organized our own evening of revelry and contempt for other nations. we had pity on several affable Canucks and brought them along to celebrate a belated Canada Day. patriotic gear was donned. i sported my oversized Texas belt buckle, drawing curious glances on the subway. Lane later tied an awesome and equally garish flag bandanna across his brow. the girls wove elaborate tales explaining how a tiny speck of red on their shoe constituted A Complete Red-White-and-Blue Ensemble. i kid, i kid.
nine of us crashed an upscale chain restaurant called Gyu Kaku - Jun gave me a nice cloth banner from there once, which i have in my apartment back in Florida. it's a yakiniku joint, which means that there's a small charcoal grill recessed into every table where you cook artful trays of bizarre meats. there was a meal set that saw numerous, increasingly odd courses brought 'round. while all delicious, the standouts were some odd manner of tongue in cross section and... Japanese hot dogs. on the Fourth. immaculately fitting.
the group shed a couple members and proceeded on cue to nomihodai karaoke. when we could wrestle the mike from heedless and howling Tyler (haha), we had some large-scale singalongs - drumming with chopsticks, bringing in fresh pitchers, and just generally being a Major Patriotic Nuisance. a fine and refined evening.
the weekend immediately following the last blog post, i went on the first of many geek pilgrimages: Akihabara and outskirts. i'd been fiending to go to Akiba since i was fifteen or so... all tech-savvy young men hold it aloft in their hearts as some cyclopean temple to Nerddom. for those uninitiated in our rites, it is also called "Electric Town", and is a dense anthill of electronics shops. it was a nice diversion from what i've increasingly recognized as the fractal geometry of Tokyo - towering subunits of near-identical entertainment / "entertainment", restaurant, and retail development iterated on spiraling and ever-decreasing scales.
i bought original Famicom carts of Dragon Quest and DQ2 for less than five bucks each. yes.
as is my duty and privilege, i sought out one of the five Pokemon Centers in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. i have never, and beyond hyperbole i truly mean this, never seen such a busy store. the queue looped back on itself four or five times with at least a dozen cash registers grabbing frantically at yen notes. the place prints money. that said, this money may combust upon erupting into the retail space, as the mean temperature of the store approximates the surface of a particularly nasty star. i almost passed out twice.
okay. on to more recent developments (next post, writing now).
7.09.2007
Interstitial
gearing up for two monster posts, but my parents hopped on Skype and my night was, just like that, spirited away. check back tomorrow.
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